Forgotten Place (2 page)

"I'm sorry I hurt you.  It wasn't my
intent to make things worse.  I wanted to give you a little
bit of peace, Helen."

My vocal chords felt like molten guitar
strings stretched ten times too taut.  "I know."

"Please tell me I didn't make things
worse.  I'll go to Levine if I did and –"

"It won't be over for years.  But no,
it's not worse than it was.  They're convinced that…well, that
things are progressing as they should've from the beginning."

"You still hate me."

"We can't have this conversation."

Silence became as taut as my vocal
chords. 

Then, at last, "We could have it face to
face."

"No, Johnny.  You have
to let this go; let me go.  I meant what I said.  When
I've mended enough to leave, that's what I'm going to do.  I
don't belong here.  I don't
want
to belong here."

"But your contract –"

"Let Darkwater Bay sue me.  Do you
think I care?"

"Yes," he murmured.  "I know how much
you care, Helen.  I'm not talking about me.  You care
about the people out here.  You cared enough not to let what
happened to Gwen Foster go.  You cared about my
detective.  You cared about dead homeless guys and even a dead
drug dealing biker whose worst crime was being too stupid to keep
his mouth shut.  I saw how much it hurt you when Maya was in
the hospital facing a fight for her life.  Do you think I
don't understand what you're doing?  None of this can hurt you
if you avoid it.  But the people who love you are
hurting.  They're suffering because you're pushing them all
away."

I believed that my tears
dried up and left me almost two months ago.  Orion proved that
theory wrong.  My eyes stung, burning liquid overflowed and
scalded my cheeks.  "They're better off without me," I
whispered.  "
You
are better off without me."

"You're crying..."

I dashed at the droplets clinging to my
chin.  Cleared my throat.  "I'm not."

A soft knock sounded on the window to my
left.  "Let me in, Helen."  Johnny stood outside under
the lanai at the back of my house.  His dark coat hung to the
knees.  Even through the darkness, I could see the water
droplets clinging to the leather skin.  He looked as sad and
fatigued as I felt, standing desolate in the cold with his cell
phone pressed to his ear.  "Baby, please let me in."

I dropped the phone, heard it clatter when
it hit the floor, and buried my face in my hands.  Why
wouldn't he stop?  Why did he have to come back – not just the
voice that made my soul weep and my heart ache, but to see
him...

His voice floated up from the tiny speaker
on the floor.  "Doc, please."

The afghan tightened around
my shoulders. 
Too late.  He's
here.  I saw him.  I don't have the strength to send him
away.
  The heart exerted its control
over what my brain screamed must be done.  I drifted to the
back door.  Fingers trembled with uncoordinated effort. 
The deadbolt twisted.

Johnny pushed the door open and stepped
inside, carried on a blast of frigid North Pacific air.  One
foot kicked the door closed while his arms swept me up into the
embrace I ached to feel.  I melted into it, into the strength
I lacked. 

He separated from me long enough to peel off
the coat.  It hit the floor with a soft whoosh before Johnny
crushed me against his chest again.  No words, just arms and
breathing and pain leeching slowly away.  He didn't
grope.  There were no kisses.  The heartbeat in his
throat slammed against my forehead.  It was the only tell that
Johnny felt anything at all.

I suspected it was a response to fear. 
How much time did he have before my anger returned, before I
pointed to the door and demanded he leave, before I started railing
at him over the intrusion into my life, not to mention onto my
property by scaling the wall around the fortress once again?

He couldn't know that I lacked the energy
for any of it.  Could he?

One arm scooped behind my knees and lifted
me.  Silently, Johnny walked across the room and sat in the
recently vacated corner of the sofa.  Imagine the gentlest
embrace of all time – made from steel bands.  That was the way
he held me.  A nose burrowed into my hair.  Inhale. 
Hold.  Slow release.

"Johnny –"

"Shh."

"I don't –"

"Not tonight, Doc.  No talking. 
No fighting.  No rejection.  Tonight, you need me to hold
you, and that's exactly what I'm going to do."

When I woke the next morning, tucked into
bed in the same sweat suit I had worn the day before, I wondered if
the comfort of my recurrent Dad dream was merely replaced with
another.  There was no dent in the pillow beside my
head.  The bedding was undisturbed save for where I slept
without moving.  The telephone wasn't bleating on the
floor.  The gas logs in the fireplace radiated warmth and
color into the drab world around me.  Not a single clue had
been left behind to prove the visitation from Johnny was
corporeal. 

I wandered through the house looking for
water droplets on the floor near the back door, a smudge on a
windowpane from his knuckles knocking, evidence that he had come to
me and chased away my demons one last time.

There was nothing.  I
felt a little bit of hope evaporate like wisps of
smoke. 
Push it
aside
, brain says. 
Let it go.  Do what must be done.  Mend
yourself and flee for parts unknown.  Leave Darkwater Bay
behind
.

My heart was too tired to protest. 
With weary resolve, I dressed for another session of physical
therapy.

Chapter 2

One of the aspects of Metro State University
Hospital that made it a great institution was the fact that by
virtue of being part of a university hospital system, research was
a huge part of its mission.  At the same time, that fact also
provided its greatest flaw.  It was also a teaching
hospital.

I try not to get irritable about such
things.  God knows, I was an intern at one time too. 
Anybody with a license, whether it's in medicine or nursing or
clinical psychology has to learn a few things hands on.  I
simply wanted to avoid being the guinea pig that trained a would-be
practitioner.  My surgeon was the chief of orthopedics. 
No pun intended, but it was the only bullet I dodged during this
ordeal.

Student nurses cared for me.  I even
had a pharmacy intern show up to talk to me about the pain
medications prescribed on discharge.

The real kicker was Amy Peterson.  Amy
had the misfortune of an internship in physical therapy in
December, the cold month of Helen Eriksson's mad dash through
rehab.  I give her credit for having the guts to stand up to
me.  I think the therapist supervising her was more than a tad
bit intimidated by my dagger eyes and razor-sharp tongue. 

It's hard to imagine me going from depressed
and living in seclusion at night to being a viper coiled and ready
for attack by the crack of lighter fog the following morning. 
These are the idiosyncrasies of my personality, I'm afraid. 
Any news that falls outside the strict boundaries of what I want to
hear brings out the venom.

After a week of physical therapy, I had
achieved 65 percent abduction of my left arm, abduction of course,
meaning how far I could extend my arm away from the midline of my
body.  It was not fast enough for my liking.

"Pushing yourself harder won't give you a
faster result, Helen," Amy scolded (the nerve!) when my left
shoulder joint was stiff as a board Monday morning.  "I can
tell that your range of motion is limited from overexertion and not
lack of exercise this weekend, so don't even think of trying to
tell me you took a couple of days off."

"You can't possibly know that."

She was fearless, that one.  Instead of
cowering away from my cold accusation, she merely smiled. 
"Sure I can.  Don't you know that the change in your muscle
mass is visible?  You lifted free weights with your left
arm.  I can feel the stiff muscle when I do this."  Her
fingers dug into my bicep.

It sucked a yelp from my gut.  "Don't
do that!  Jesus, were you trained by Hitler?"

"Remember when I told you that it was great
that in five sessions you increased range of motion from 25 percent
to 65 percent?"

"Of course I remember."

"You're back down to 50 percent now,
Helen.  Congratulations.  You've probably tacked another
week onto therapy.  You're not trying to ease your way back
onto the job early, are you?"

"No."  Truer words had not fallen from
these fat lips all year.  I scowled at her, and then nothing
in particular when she returned my expression with one of her
own.

Don't blame me – you're the one who didn't
follow directions.

Such a simple but effective look.  Amy
might've been an intern, but she had the skill of a veteran
already.  I harrumphed and admitted my crime.  "I figured
if I achieved 40 percent in five days with you, maybe I could bump
it up another fifteen or twenty on my own."

"Your body needed the rest.  Pick up
the three pound weight and see if you can abduct to here." 
Her hand spanned a 30 degree arc away from my body. 
"Good.  Now hold it and count to thirty."

Numbers started ticking through my head.

"Count out loud."

I groaned and let the weight drag my arm
down to my side.  "It hurts.  I should've taken that
magic pill before I came over this morning."

"You should've followed my directions. 
Let's get the infra red on you for awhile and try the whirlpool,
see if we can't lure some of the stiffness out of the joint and
muscles before we try the exercises again."

I was about to comply when the cell phone on
my belt clip chimed.

"Don't even think about answering that."

Too late.  I looked at the caller
ID.  Something about my dream sparked renewed desire to hear
the voice of whoever might be calling me.  An unfamiliar local
number only served to heighten curiosity, not dampen it.

"Eriksson."

"Helen, it's Zack Carpenter.  Am I
calling at a bad time?"

My chest constricted.  Zack was not
pleased when the gunshot wound forced him to bring in a less
compelling forensic psychologist to testify at Jerry Lowe's
competency hearing.  The end result was far from
optimal.  Nobody lost, but nobody won either.  Lowe was
currently placed under an involuntary commitment order at Dunhaven,
the local psychiatric hospital, while a more in-depth evaluation of
his fitness for standing trial was conducted.

"I'm in physical therapy.  Is this
about –"

"Nothing serious, Helen.  I called
about your plans for the weekend."

Wine.  Fireplace. 
Depression.  Self-loathing.  Nightmares.  Urgent
stuff.  "Um..."

"You should've received the invitation in
the mail a few weeks ago."

"Yeah, I haven't exactly been up to dealing
with my personal correspondence."

His frown was silent, but I heard it just
the same.  "How is the therapy progressing?  Are you
getting adequate help at home?"

Fine, Carpenter.  Blame my neglect of
the United States Postal Service on a bum arm.  "Yes, but I
bank and pay bills electronically, so what little I get in the
mailbox is usually junk.  No offense to whoever invited me to
something."

"It's the annual Christmas party for law
enforcement personnel.  I suspected that you either weren't
feeling up to attending –"

Great excuse, thank you very much.

"Or hadn't seen the invitation.  It
would mean so much to everyone if you could attend, Helen.  I
thought I'd call and see if... well, if you aren't planning to
attend with someone already, perhaps you'd give me the honor of
escorting you to the event."

I dragged my lower lip through my
teeth.  "I'm not sure I'm up for a social event, Zack, least
of all some police department Christmas party."

Amy Bigmouth piped up, "It would do you good
to get out of the house, Helen.  You've got enough range of
motion for dinner and a little dancing.  Go with the man
already."

She's lucky I'm impaired.  The urge to
drown her in the three foot deep aluminum whirlpool tub was
strong. 

"Was that your physical therapist?"

"She's an intern, so she barely qualifies to
have an opinion."  I glared at my tormenter and probably
melted ten pounds off her stocky frame. 

"I'm sorry.  I feel like I'm putting
undue pressure on you, Helen.  Besides, from what I've heard,
if anybody should be inviting you to the law enforcement gala, it's
Johnny Orion."

I stood stock still.  "Orion? 
What gave you the impression I'd go with him?  I thought you
said this thing was for law enforcement."

Zack fell silent, but not for long. 
"He didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"When he saved your life... Helen, Johnny
blew his cover.  What I heard –"

Oh Darkwater Bay, your infamous rumor mill
never ceases to amaze me.

"Was that when the paramedics showed up to
take you to the hospital, that some of the Downey cops had to
physically restrain him.  One of them actually thought he
would arrest Orion for shooting Kim Jackson and killing him. 
Johnny whipped out his badge and practically shoved it down the
poor kid's throat.  Weren't you curious about how Johnny shot
Jackson without any repercussions?"

Honestly, it was probably
the only question that
hadn't
popped into my head.  Then again, I elevated
wallowing in despair to a high art form over the past couple of
months.  I couldn't be bothered to care what Johnny did to
save my literal life after learning that he broke the law to get
Mark Seleeby and the FBI off my case.